[DF] Technical Analysis Review

fun. - 'All The Pretty Girls'

My technical analysis of this video showed me first and foremost the sheer amount of shots used in a music video. In the first minute and a half which I took notes on, there were 56 individual shots - averaging out at just over 0.6 shots a second, or more than one shot every two seconds. This means that on our project we will really need to have a solid plan and storyboard to ensure we can fill the time, and we should also be taking lots of filler shots whenever we can in case we don't have enough footage and we are nearing the deadline.

I also decided to highlight in two different colours which shots were performance and which were narrative, to give me an idea of how these elements are juxtaposed in the video, as well as what proportion of the film time is given to each. What I found is that the beginning of the video (as well as, upon further inspection, many other videos in the genre) is performance-based - in this case, the first seventeen seconds. This seems to be a way in which the band image is imposed upon the audience, and the way in which the metanarrative of the artist is immedietly continued. It also allows the audience to quickly recognise instantly what band's video they're watching. From there on, however, narrative seems to take the main focus of the video, with performance jumping in every now and then to keep the band image fresh in the audiences mind or, in terms of Richard Dyer's paradoxes, present. The end of the video becomes dominated by narrative as it reaches its conclusion, perhaps to leave the audience with the message they were trying to convey, or to make the artist simultaneously absent if we again look at Dyer's paradoxes.

Another interesting thing I noted was that the entire narrative was filmed employing the use of handicam. This gave the narrative a somewhat personal feel - as if the audience is there in the video. Furthermore, it creates the kind of constant motion that is important to keep a video interesting.

'Meat' shot of the lead singer

The shot type was also something I was keen to look into, as I was unsure how we might approach the diversity and distribution of shots in our video. What I found from this video was that long shots were very common in the narrative, in establishing the setting and capturing a lot of the action in the handicam way used. However, the performance consisted far more of medium close-ups and close-ups. This is again to create a strong band image, and plenty of 'meat' shots (close-ups of the singer's face) are used.

Tegan and Sara - 'Hell'

For my second video I decided to choose something a little different, so that I could take a look at other ways of doing music videos from a fairly standard performance and narrative video. This video is far more conceptual, and mixes concept simultaneously with performance. The video also reflects the nature of the band. Tegan and Sara are identical twins, and consequently the video shows two rooms which almost mirror each other in all except colour. The camera consistantly switches between the two rooms, sometimes even without a cut, as seen in the shot beginning at 0:18 and ending at 0:33, where the camera goes through the wall.

It was interesting to see how a loose narrative or concept could be integrated completely with performance, however it seems to me that doing a video in ths way requires a much more interesting and gripping concept, as it only has the singular element to hold the audience's attention.

One aspect of this video which we are planning on possibly employing is the way in which the artist lip syncs as the background or their costume changes. In this video, they often lip sync with their head through a picture, and the picture changes as if cutting, but the artist remains the same. We were considering something similar in our performance aspect - regular changing of T-shirts while the performance continues.